Ethiopia has experienced a historically
unprecedented increase in inflation, mainly driven by cereal
price inflation, which is among the highest in Sub-Saharan
Africa. Using monthly data from the past decade, the authors
estimate error correction models to identify the relative
importance of several factors contributing to overall
inflation and its three major components, cereal prices,
food prices, and non-food prices. The main finding is that,
in a longer perspective, over three to four years, the main
factors that determine domestic food and non-food prices are
the exchange rate and international food and goods prices.
In the short run, agricultural supply shocks and inflation
inertia strongly affect domestic inflation, causing large
deviations from long-run price trends. Money supply growth
does affect food price inflation in the short run, although
the money stock itself does not seem to drive inflation. The
results suggest the need for a multi-pronged approach to
fight inflation. Forecast scenarios suggest monetary and
exchange rate policies need to take into account cereal
production...

The overall goal of this report is to
give strategic focus to implementation of the agricultural
water management (AWM) components of the corporate
strategies. Its specific objectives are to set out the
changing context of demand and supply for agricultural
water; to identify the policy, institutional, and incentive
reform options that will accelerate productivity
improvements and pro-poor growth; and to articulate
priorities for investment in AWM. It is also intended to
define the role of the public sector and other stakeholders,
and to set out how AWM can be best integrated upstream into
water resources management, and downstream as an input
provider into the agricultural economy.

Fostering more rapid rural development,
particularly raising the productivity and competitiveness,
and accelerating the growth of the agricultural and rural
non-farm sectors, and critical elements to achieving faster
overall economic growth, and hence, poverty reduction in
Maharashtra. This policy note focuses on examining the
constraints to promoting more rapid agricultural growth in
Maharashtra. It aims to: 1) review the recent status and
performance of the agricultural sector in the State,
focusing on selected key areas such as cotton, sugar, water,
and the rural non-farm sector; 2) examine the major policy
and regulatory impediments in these sub-sectors that hinder
their contribution to more rapid and sustained agricultural
growth and rural poverty alleviation; and 3) propose options
for improvement in these areas as well as identify areas
requiring further study. A second volume provides more
detailed discussion on the Government of India Sugar Policy
(Annex A), development schemes of the National Horticulture
Board (Annex B)...

Given population and income growth, it
is widely expected that the agricultural sector will have to
expand the use of water for irrigation to meet rising food
demand; at the same time, the competition for water
resources is growing in many regions. As a response, it is
increasingly recommended that efforts should focus on
improving water productivity in agriculture, and significant
public and private investments are being made with this goal
in mind. Yet most public communications are vague on the
meaning of agricultural water productivity, and on what
should be done to improve it. They also tend to emphasize
water as if it were the only input that mattered. This paper
presents findings from a first attempt to survey the
agricultural productivity and efficiency literature with
regard to the explicit inclusion of water aspects in
productivity and efficiency measurements, with the aim of
contributing to the discussion on how to assess and possibly
improve agricultural water productivity. The focus is on
studies applying single-factor productivity measures...

This review's objectives were to
examine the structure and performance of the agricultural
research and extension systems (public and private) at the
central and provincial levels, identify successes as well as
constraints to improving the system s effectiveness for
fostering innovation, and propose options for further policy
and institutional development, drawing on lessons from
international experience. The review focused principally on
nonplantation crops, although its main recommendations apply
across the agricultural sector. This synthesis report
summarizes the main findings of the review and builds upon
them by adding some new elements. The conflict in Sri Lanka
is explicitly recognized. Additionally, the implications of
changes in the wider agricultural context for agricultural
research and extension are explored, and have led to the
adoption of an innovation systems perspective to organize
the major findings

This report summarizes the findings of a
study undertaken by the World Bank at the request of the
Government of Rwanda. The study had three main objectives:
(i) Validate the argument that agriculture has potential to
become a leading engine of pro-poor growth in Rwanda and
identify potential sources of rapid and sustainable growth
within the agricultural sector; (ii) identify key actions
that will be needed to unlock these sources of agricultural
growth, and describe actions in other sectors that will be
needed to support the successful implementation of the
government's agricultural policy agenda; and (iii)
confirm the congruence between the priority actions needed
to stimulate increased agricultural growth and the policy
reforms, institutional changes, and supporting investments
envisioned under the Plan Strategique de Transformation
Agricole (PSTA). This report consists of five sections, of
which the introduction is the first. Section 2 describes the
importance of agriculture in the economy of Rwanda and
analyzes recent trends in the performance of the
agricultural sector. Section 3 discusses possible future
drivers of growth...

The increasing resilience to climate
change in the agricultural sector report presents
local-level priorities, informed by stakeholder input, to
build agricultural resilience in both countries. The
objectives of this study were threefold: (1) to improve the
understanding of climate change projections and impacts on
rural communities and livelihoods in selected regions of
Jordan and Lebanon, specifically the Jordan River Valley and
Lebanon's Bekaa Valley; (2) to engage local
communities, farmers, local experts, and local and national
government representatives in a participatory fashion in
helping craft agricultural adaptation options to climate
change; and (3) to develop local and regional climate change
action plans that formulate recommendations for investment
strategies and strategic interventions in local agricultural
systems. The climate challenges confronting development in
the Middle East are particularly stark. This region, and in
particular its rural people, face what might be called a
"triple threat" from climate change. First...

Tanzania is largely an agriculture-based
economy. This sector accounts for over three-quarters of
national employment, and approximately 25 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP). The national agricultural input
voucher scheme (NAIVS) is a market smart input subsidy
program designed in response to the sharp rise in global
grain and fertilizer prices in 2007 and 2008. The main aim
of the program is to raise maize and rice production, and
thus preserve Tanzania's household and national food
security. During the period from 2008 to 2013, approximately
United States (U.S.) 300 million dollars has been invested
in providing more than 2.5 million smallholder farmers with
a 50 percent subsidy on a one acre package of maize or rice
seed, and chemical fertilizer. The input subsidy program
helped Tanzanian smallholders harvest more than 2.5 million
tons of additional maize and rice grain. The NAIVS program
also faced multiple logistical challenges. These challenges
are being considered in the government's new big
results now initiative. This report summarizes the results
of an overview of the program...

The issue of regional differences in
development has moved to the center of the development
debate in Sri Lanka, partly after the release of regional
poverty data. For the past many years, there have been
significant and increasing differences between the Western
province and the rest of the country in terms of per capita
income levels, growth rates of per capita income, poverty
rates, and the structure of provincial economies. The
structure of the report is as follows: chapter two looks at
the poverty/growth/agriculture nexus in the poorest regions
of Sri Lanka. It presents data on poverty and growth in the
poorest provinces, especially Uva and Sabaragamuwa, and
provides an analysis of factors associated with the rural
poor. Chapter three provides an overview and brief
discussion of the Government's agricultural policies
and programs. Chapter four identifies constraints that
restrict farmers' incomes in the four poorest
provinces. It presents results from extensive stakeholder
consultations carried out in these provinces. These results
are complemented with findings from the 2005 rural
investment climate assessment to identify some of the
general constraints in the agriculture sector in Sri Lanka.
Chapter five presents the findings of an agricultural
resource audit of small-scale farmers in the poorest regions
that analyzed production...

Agricultural growth rates in the Latin
America and the Caribbean (LAC) region have been much slower
than the rest of the developing world. In the regions of
East Asia, South Asia and Middle East and North Africa, the
annual growth of agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
in 1980-2004 exceeded 3 percent, while growth in Sub-
Saharan Africa averaged almost 3 percent. This paper
attempts to present an overview of the agricultural sector
in LAC, discuss its distinctive features, and the potential
role of Information and Communication Technology's
(ICTs) in improving agricultural productivity and market
efficiency in this region. The discussion in this paper will
refer to the evidence provided by studies that evaluate the
impact of ICTs interventions. While the emphasis will be put
on the studies that evaluate interventions in the LAC
region, there will also be references to studies in other
developing economies whenever these are pertinent to the LAC
context. The commercialization of agricultural products has
suffered important transformations in recent decades...

This study is part of a global research
project seeking to understand the changing scope and impact
of the policy bias against agriculture and the reasons
behind agricultural policy reforms in Africa, Europe's
transition economies, Latin America and the Caribbean, and
Asia. One purpose of the project is to obtain quantitative
indicators of the effects of recent policy interventions. A
second objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the
political economy of trends in the distortions in
agricultural incentives in various national settings. The
third goal is to use this deeper understanding to explore
the prospects for reducing the distortions in agricultural
incentives and discover the likely implications for
agricultural competitiveness, equality, and poverty
reduction in many countries, large and small. This book
provides an overview of the evolution of the distortions to
agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies
in the World Bank-defined regions of East Asia and South
Asia. The volume includes an introduction and summary
chapter and commissioned studies of three Northeast Asian...

This book provides an overview of the
evolution of distortions to agricultural incentives caused
by price and trade policies in the World Bank-defined region
of Latin America and the Caribbean. Following the
introduction and summary, it includes commissioned country
studies of one Caribbean, one Central American, and six
South American economies. The chapters are followed by two
appendixes. The first describes the methodology used to
measure the nominal and relative rates of assistance to
farmers and the taxes and subsidies involved in food
consumption; the second provides country and regional
summaries, in tables, of annual estimates of these rates of
assistance. This study on Latin America is based on a sample
of eight countries, comprising the big four economies of
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico; Colombia and Ecuador,
two of the poorest South American tropical countries; the
Dominican Republic, the largest Caribbean economy; and
Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America. Together,
in 2000-04...

Agriculture has made major contributions
to China's economic growth and poverty reduction, but
the literature has rarely focused on the institutional
factors that might underpin such structural transformation
and productivity. This paper aims to fill that gap. Drawing
on an 8-year panel of 1,200 households in six key provinces,
it explores the impact of government land reallocations and
formal land-use certificates on agricultural productivity
growth, as well as the likelihood of households to exit from
agriculture or send family members to the non-farm sector.
It finds that land tenure insecurity, measured by the
history of past land reallocations, discourages households
from quitting agriculture. The recognition of land rights
through formal certificates encourages the temporary
migration of rural labor. Both factors have a large impact
on productivity (at about 30 percent each), mainly by
encouraging market-based land transfers. A sustained
increase in non-agricultural opportunities will likely
reinforce the importance of secure land tenure...

This study is part of the second phase of a long-term programmatic work on poverty in Mexico, in three phases being carried out by the Bank at the request of the Government of Mexico. Reasons for a study on rural poverty, are because the size and intensity of the phenomenon, poverty, and inequality in rural Mexico are a matter of concern not only from the well-being of the poors' point of view, but also from that of the expansion of the internal market, inclusion of large sectors of the population traditionally excluded from the economic and social mainstream, and, the political integration and stability of the country. Poverty incidence in rural areas, in particular extreme poverty, is much higher than in urban ones. Although most of the country's moderate poor live in urban areas, most of the extreme poor are rural, even if the rural population is only one quarter of total. There are differences in sources of income between rural and urban poor. Also, rural environment poses specific constraints for provision of social infrastructure and services. Furthermore, institutions and culture tend to differ between rural and urban areas. The presence of indigenous groups is much larger in rural areas, whereas the production systems, the economic and other risks faced by rural poor and their coping strategies...

Changes in climate and their impact on agricultural systems and rural economies are already evident throughout Europe and Central Asia (ECA). Adaptation measures now in use in Albania, largely piecemeal efforts, will be insufficient to prevent impacts on agricultural production over the coming decades. There is growing interest at the country and development partner levels to have a better understanding of the exposure, sensitivities, and impacts of climate change at farm level, and to develop and prioritize adaptation measures to mitigate the adverse consequences. Specifically, this report provides a menu of climate change adaptation options for the agriculture and water resources sectors, along with specific adaptation actions, that are tailored to four distinct agro-ecological zones (AEZs) within Albania. This menu reflects the results of three inter-related activities, conducted jointly by the team and local partners: (1) quantitative economic modeling of baseline conditions and the effects of climate change and an array of adaptation options; (2) qualitative analysis conducted by the team of agronomists, crop modelers, and water resources experts; and (3) input from a series of participatory workshops for national decision makers and farmers in each of the AEZs. This report provides a summary of the methods...

Changes in climate and their impact on agricultural systems and rural economies are already evident throughout Europe and Central Asia (ECA). Adaptation measures now in use in Moldova, largely piecemeal efforts, will be insufficient to prevent impacts on agricultural production over the coming decades. There is growing interest at country and development partner levels to have a better understanding of the exposure, sensitivities, and impacts of climate change at farm level, and to develop and prioritize adaptation measures to mitigate the adverse consequences. The approach of this volume is predicated on strong country ownership and participation, and is defined by its emphasis on 'win-win' or 'no regrets' solutions to the multiple challenges posed by climate change for the farmers of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The solutions are measures that increase resilience to future climate change, boost current productivity despite the greater climate variability already occurring, and limit greenhouse gas emissions-also known as 'climate-smart agriculture.' Specifically, this report provides a menu of climate change adaptation options for the agriculture and water resources sectors, along with specific recommendations that are tailored to three distinct Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZs) within Moldova. This menu reflects the results of three inter-related activities...

Agricultural production is inextricably tied to climate, making agriculture one of the most climate-sensitive of all economic sectors. In countries such as Uzbekistan, the risks of climate change for the agricultural sector are a particularly immediate and important problem because the majority of the rural population depends either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. Recent trends in water availability and the presence of drought in Uzbekistan have underscored these risks, as has the presence of agricultural pests that may not have previously been found in Uzbekistan. The need to adapt to climate change in all sectors is on the agenda of national governments and development partners. The capacity to adapt to climatic changes, both in mitigating risks and in taking advantage of the opportunities that climate change can create, is in part dependent on financial resources. As a result, development partners will continue to have an important role in enhancing the adaptive capacity of the Uzbekistan agriculture sector. In response to these challenges, the World Bank and the government of Uzbekistan embarked on a joint study to identify and prioritize options for climate change adaptation of the agricultural sector. This report provides a menu of practical climate change adaptation options for the agriculture and water resources sectors...

Agricultural production is inextricably tied to climate, making agriculture one of the most climate-sensitive of all economic sectors. In countries such as the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, the risks of climate change for the agricultural sector are a particularly immediate and important problem because the majority of the rural population depends either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. Climate impacts can therefore undermine progress that has been made in poverty reduction and adversely impact food security and economic growth in vulnerable rural areas. In order to be effective, a plan for adapting the sector to climate change must strengthen both human capital and physical capital in their capacity. The need to adapt to climate change in all sectors is now on the agenda of national governments and development partners. As a result, development partners will continue to have an important role in enhancing the adaptive capacity of the Macedonian agricultural sector. Another key factor for FYR Macedonia's development of an adaptation plan for agriculture is furthering FYR Macedonia's work toward European Union (EU) accession, for which FYR Macedonia has been a candidate since 2005. The Macedonian government has already begun to focus on required EU reforms...

Economic growth, job creation, and
development are central to the decade of transformation
(2015-25) and long-term security for the people of
Afghanistan. The Bank and the Government of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) recognize that agriculture
and rural development are a key to inclusive growth, and
hence need renewed vigor and strategic long-term
investments. Further, the Bank and the GoIRA acknowledge
that increases in agricultural productivity and market
access for smallholders are critical for rural development,
job creation, and food security in Afghanistan. Sections two
and three of this report describe the agricultural sector
and its current and potential roles in the Afghan economy,
and present the rationale for choosing certain areas and
subsectors for a selective 'first mover' strategy
to achieve early gains. Section four outlines the
constraints and potential in each of the three value chains
proposed for the selective strategy, irrigated wheat,
intensive livestock production, and horticulture. Section
five describes cross-cutting constraints and how best to
address them...